Nancy Drew is a fictional character, the heroine of a popular mystery series aimed at the children-young adult audience, and written under the collective pseudonym "Carolyn Keene". The series was created and outlined in detail in 1930 by Edward Stratemeyer, founder of the Stratemeyer Syndicate, with the first manuscripts written by Mildred A. Wirt Benson and edited by Stratemeyer's daughter Harriet Stratemeyer Adams. The Stratemeyer Syndicate had a strict non-disclosure contract; writers such as Mildred Benson produced books based upon outlines provided by the Syndicate. As a ghostwriter, Benson was the second most prolific writer (after Stratemeyer-Adams herself), producing twenty-three of the first thirty volumes